Raging Fever
by Lady Silverbird
Summary: Cutter ends up sick and Jenny gets to play nurse. Things run smoothly until a feverish Cutter starts hallucinating...


"Jenny! Hey, Jenny, hold up!" called Connor Temple as she was on her way out of the door.

She stopped walking, waiting for him to hurry over to her. He was such a gangly little dork, sometimes it stunned her. "What is it, Connor? Say it quickly, I want to go home," said Jenny Lewis, adjusting the strap of her purse on her shoulder.

"Yeah, I know, I know. Listen, do you think that you could stop by the Professor's house on your way home? He was looking pretty bad before, and he had a fever. Lester won't let me go home until I get the anomaly locking device fixed, and I'm a little worried about him," he implored, looking at her with big, pleading eyes.

She paused for a second, staring at him. Abby had evicted Connor from her flat - something about her brother needing a place to stay - and for reasons that she could not fathom, Cutter had allowed the young man to stay at his house. She did want to get home and have a glass of wine and a bubble bath, but if Connor was actually worried about the professor, it was safe to assume that it was more than just a sore throat. Jenny sighed. "Fine. Do you have a key?" she asked, and he beamed, slipping it out of his pocket and into her hand. "You owe me for this, Connor Temple," she said, wagging a finger at him.

"I know I do. Ta, Jenny," he said.

_"Temple!"_ boomed Lester's voice, and the young man winced.

"I'm-a gonna get back to work before Lester kills me, but tomorrow's lunch is on me," Connor promised before darting back over to the anomaly locking device. "I'm working, I'm working!" he called up to Lester.

Jenny sighed and headed out the door towards the car park, wondering just how bad Nick was feeling.

* * *

Turning the key in the lock, she opened the front door and stepped into the house. "Nick? It's me, Jenny," she called, not wanting to startle the man. "Connor said that you were sick, and he asked me to stop by and check up on you." She shut the door and locked it, leaving the key on the table. Shrugging off her coat, she looked around the house. It was actually a rather nice place, and there were all sorts of books, papers, and even odd pieces of dinosaur bone here and there. And it was clean, surprisingly so. The man was committed to keeping his home clean. But she saw no sign of the man himself. "Nick?" she called again.

She heard a low moaning noise and followed it into the den. The minute she saw him, Jenny's chest ached slightly. "Oh, Nick..." He looked absolutely miserable, sprawled on the couch, eyes half-closed, flags of fever-colour standing out on his cheeks, hair clinging to his forehead and neck with sweat even as he shivered. She walked over to him, crouching beside the couch and placing her hand on his forehead. God, he was burning up.

His eyes came open at the slight contact, and he looked at her. His gaze was glassy and slightly unfocused, pupils dilated. "Hullo, Miss Lewis...fancy a cuppa tea?" he asked thickly.

"Perhaps another time. C'mon, get up. We need to get you into a shower and cool you down," she said, grasping his arm and helping him to sit up. He slumped over, crumpled but technically still upright, leaning up against her side. Jenny held his arm, stood, and carefully helped him to his feet, keeping her arm around his waist for support. Tripping and staggering, she guided him into the bathroom. Nick mumbled, delusional.

Jenny let him slump against the bathroom counter, pulled back the shower curtain, and turned on the water, making sure that it wasn't icy cold but not too warm either. Turning back, she snapped her fingers for his attention. "Nick. Nick. Right here. Focus. Look at me," she said, and his gaze semi-focused onto her. "You need to get into the shower and cool off, okay? Think you can manage that?" she asked. He nodded; she left the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Jenny headed back into the kitchen. She started looking through the cabinets, taking off her jacket and draping it over the back of a chair. He didn't have much by way of food, but she did find bread that wasn't expired. Putting the kettle on the stove, she toasted a few slices of bread.

Down the hall, she heard the sound of the shower cutting off. Jenny heard footsteps on the hardwood floors and turned. "I made tea - " she started to say, but her voice dried up. Nick stood in the doorway of the kitchen, only a fluffy white towel knotted around his waist. His wet hair stood up everywhere on his head, and moisture formed a glistening sheen on his shoulders and chest. "I - uh…" she tried to articulate into proper words. "Perhaps you should, erm, put some pants on," she said at last, lifting a hand to shield her gaze, trying not to simply ogle him.

He looked down at himself, still slightly delusional from the fever, obviously. "Yeah, prob'ly," he muttered. To her shock, he began to loosen the knot that anchored the towel around his waist and kept his hidden bits hidden.

"No!" she cried. "No, Nick, not in here, in the _other room!"_ she said, turning her back to him before she could see anything she wasn't meant to. Blood rushed to her face, and she had to resist the urge to fan herself with a towel. She felt like she was the one with the fever.

"Why?" he asked, and she risked a quick glance over her shoulder at him. Nick was looking at her with a baffled expression, the towel sagging dangerously low on his lean waist. "You've _seen_ it before."

_Say what now?_ she thought. "What are you talking about?" she asked. Jenny surely would have remembered _that_ event.

"Well, in the shower for one," he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

"The shower?" she repeated weakly.

He nodded. "Other places, too," he told her, and then Nick began to count on his fingers. "On the floor, in the ARC, in the bedroom, in the kitchen, on the couch, in the den, against the wall, in the garden, in my office, on the pool table..." He stopped counting, staring down at his hands. "Well, I've run out of fingers. Inconvenient," he grumbled.

_He has a pool table? _Jenny's face felt so hot she thought she might be the one needing a cold shower now. Forcing herself to take in deep, steady breaths, she steadied her voice. "Nick, you're hallucinating from the fever. I can promise you that we have never had sex in the shower or anywhere else for that matter," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers.

Nick frowned slightly, looking fairly put out, like a small child denied a sweet. "So...we never had sex in the shower?" he asked, and she shook her head. He frowned, crossing his arms over his chest in a pout. "Dammit."

Jenny wasn't sure if she should be flattered that he imagined her like that or offended. It was also a little bit cute, the way he acted like a pouting child. "Just...go put on pants. In the other room!" she added quickly. The toast was done. She began to butter the slices as he shuffled off, still pouting. As she was pouring tea, he returned, still shirtless but wearing pyjama pants at least. "Here, eat," she said, placing the plate of toast in front of him, then she rested the back of her hand against his forehead. He still felt warm, but at least he wasn't burning the way he had been.

"I like toast," he said happily, looking up at her. "Better than bananas but not as good as bananas on toast. I really do like toast." Nick stopped suddenly, and he dropped the slice in his hand. "Toast doesn't like me," he muttered. That was all the warning she had before he was jumping out of the chair and running across the kitchen to the counter, vomiting into the sink, emptying his stomach of the toast and tea he'd just had.

Jenny groaned, pulling a face. "Poor Nick," she murmured quietly, rubbing a hand over his smooth back and feeling his muscle quiver under her palm. "It'll be okay." He couldn't even articulate a proper answer, just a garbled moan, still bent over the sink. Reaching over his shoulder, she turned on the tap, rinsing the mess down the drain. He scooped a handful of the water into his mouth, spitting it out to help remove the taste of acid. "Better now?" she asked him.

"Li'l bit," he said groggily.

"Let's get you into bed, Nick. You need to lay down." She grasped his arm, turned off the tap, and helped him upstairs into his bedroom. He went with her willingly, mumbling something about beautiful women getting him into bed, but she ignored the ramblings of his feverish brain. Jenny threw back the quilt, getting him under the covers. As a precaution, she brought out a small wastebin, set it beside the bed, and was halfway out the door when she heard him plaintively call her name. "What?"

"D'you think you could stay here with me? Please? I don't want to be alone right now," he said, looking at her with wide eyes. He didn't look like a university professor almost ten years older than her; he looked like a scared child afraid of the monster under his bed. Jenny hesitated for a second, thinking of her fiancé...but Nick wasn't asking her to have sex with him. He just wanted her to stay and keep him company whilst he was sick. So she nodded, taking off her shoes and climbing up onto the bed next to him. Nick rolled over and wrapped his arms loosely around her, filling her nose with the warm scent of him, and he laid his head on her shoulder, forehead tucked into the crook of her neck. "See, I knew we'd done this before. We fit," he murmured.

Jenny chose to let that one slide instead of correcting him. "Goodnight, Nick," she said, flicking off the light.

"G'night, Jenny Lewis," he said, his humid breath dancing across her collarbone. He'd long since stopped calling her Claudia Brown. She was nearly asleep when he murmured, so low she almost didn't hear him, "I love you." She had to close her eyes against the tears that were suddenly there.

* * *

Nick yawned without opening his eyes, curling himself around the warm body next to him. He nuzzled his face into the tangle of soft curly hair that smelled like milk and honey; she murmured sleepily, snuggling back against him. He opened his eyes slowly, trying to clear the cotton balls from his mind; his throat felt as if it'd been scrubbed out with steel wool. For a split second, he almost thought it was Claudia Brown lying beside him, but it was Jenny Lewis. Jenny Lewis was in bed with him. She was engaged, he was still technically married, and he couldn't remember what'd happened last night. Oh, God, what had he done? With a strangled croak, he rolled away from her and fell off the bed onto the cold floor with a _thump._ Awakened by the noise, Jenny sat up in alarm, looking around. "Nick?" she called, turning to look at him.

"Wh - what'd we do? What happened last night? What'd we _do?"_ he repeated.

"Nick, Nick, it's okay. Calm down. It's all right," Jenny soothed. "Look here. Still clothed," she said, plucking at the collar of her shirt. She still had on all of her clothes, and he wore his old pyjama pants…but he couldn't remember when she'd gotten here or why they were in bed together. She seemed to read the confusion in his face and slid onto the floor next to him. "You had a fever last night. 39 degrees. Connor asked me to come by and see how you were because he was worried, and I stayed here for the night to take care of you," she explained.

He frowned, thinking for a moment as he sorted through his memories. They were blurry and unfocused, but he could dimly remember having toast then vomiting into the sink, taking a cold shower to lower his body temperature. Nothing else. Nothing had happened between the two of them. Taking a deep breath, he rubbed both hands over his face, letting out a relieved sigh.

"Nick?" asked Jenny, and he looked up at her with a questioning grunt. "Do you even have a pool table?"


End file.
